Blood and Jazz

Notes from the Dvirhim Revolution

Tyne

Tyne is the capital city of the human nation of Cassily, and formerly was the seat of the Tynan Empire. Founded in 1247, it quickly grew into a major city-state and dominated the peninsular region in which it was situated, ruled by a hereditary monarch. In 1491 the monarchy allowed for the creation of a senate to represent the interests of the wealthy citizens; the senate’s power grew rapidly over the course of the next few centuries until it arguably held more power than the king.

In 1736 Tyne began a protracted economically-motivated war over trade routes in the Mezzërdinian Sea with the Dragon Empire of Komwë, Tyne’s most powerful rival state. The war lasted for 118 years, the longest war in Ërdin’s history, but in the end Tyne was victorious and brutally laid waste to Komwë in a final bloody scorched earth campaign. Tyne claimed what little arable land was left once the war was concluded, forcing the refugees of the once-great civilization into the desolate wastelands, where they have ever since remained a scattered people at the mercy and whims of other empires, only occasionally dreaming of reclaiming what was once theirs.

The war altered the political climate of Tyne substantially, reducing the powers of the senate as the people gradually began to favor the decisive policies of a single centralized authority. With Komwë’s former lands occupied, the Kingdom of Tyne became the mighty Tynan Empire, and spread through conquest and cultural influence all across the continent of Tynwë.

In 2205, the green dragon Lyndesine came into conflict with the Tynan Empire when she attacked the library of the port city of Entiok, having attacked smaller towns and villages in an exploratory manner throughout her youth. Though it took a hundred years, eventually the Tynan army tracked her to her lair and set it ablaze; unfortunately, this only provoked the dragon into a vengeful anger, deliberately destroying whole towns rather than merely raiding individual buildings for valuable objects. Lyndesine and the Tynan army continued to clash until the explosive Battle of Pelaunia in 2318, where Lyndesine was badly injured and the Tynan dead numbered so many that (according to legend) the land, formerly barren, was made fertile as it is today by the bounty of blood and corpses rotting over it.

Terrified by the discovery that a single adult dragon could pose a threat as great as an entire rival nation, Tyne spread a protocol through its conquered lands that has continued even through the empire’s collapse: all dragon eggs and wyrmlings are to be destroyed as early as possible, to prevent new man-eating or city-destroying dragons from reaching adulthood. Dragons that have already grown to adulthood and proven themselves to be diplomatic are generally left alone, but all younger dragons are to be assumed violent and dangerous.

In 2505, Lyndesine departed from Cassily to seek a less aggressive host nation and settled in the Waldermark Forest to the northeast, resulting in a great migration of elf tribes to the southwest; ironically, it was this very wave of elf barbarian hordes that dealt Tyne its fatal blow in 2684 after the empire had been weakened by internal corruption and overextended boundaries, not Lyndesine. But while the Tynan Empire is gone, its legacy lives on in the cultures of nearly every civilization in the world.